We review the new album from the alt-country heroes.
Attention, fellow indie-come-latelys: If you got into Death Cab for Cutie with Plans and Metric with Fantasies, I and Love and You is going to be your perfect entrée into The Avett Brothers.
The Avetts are ushering in the new sound in independent rock, which seems to be Southern-tinged roots-pop, so come hitch your wheels to this bandwagon with the rest of us. Named “Artist to Watch in 2009” by Rolling Stone, the band, consisting of brothers Scott and Seth Avett and bassist Bob Crawford, is on their sixth genre-defying studio album and their first major-label record with I and Love and You, released today. When it was announced that the North Carolina trio would be teaming up for an album with producer Rick Rubin, co-head of Columbia Records, indie hearts instantly began to hammer. Would the Avetts’ trademark folksy-Americana be squelched into Nickelback-lite by corporate bigwigs?
Thankfully, the twang survives on Love, if with a bit of a new polish. The Brothers’ music still affects with quiet texture; their melodies are hushed and halcyon, and their lyrics are thoughtful, doubt-tarnished poetry, brimming with desire and aching wanderlust. On the stunning title track and first single, sumptuous piano and cello weave a lush ballad, sweeping into the chorus: “Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in, are you aware [of] the shape I’m in.” The narrator carries the mood to its poignant conclusion: “Three words that became hard to say: I and Love and You.”
The album remains elegant on other quiet, contemplative songs, like the playful romance of “January Wedding” and on "Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise” with its down-home pace and axiomatic musings: "Your life doesn't change by the man that's elected … decide what to be and go be it." "And It Spread" is jaunty and catchy, and "Ten Thousand Words" blends the best elements of Led Zeppelin ballads, its lilt recalling the ruminating pastoral lyrics of “Going to California” and the gentle riff from “Over the Hills and Far Away.” The Avetts veer a little off track when they try to trade the ballads for upbeat pop. “Kick Drum Heart” bobs along a little too brightly, and the end of the album fiddles itself into a corner with "Slight Figure of Speech," which shoots out a torrent of Barenaked Ladies-style rap. The disparity of strengths is clearly felt in “The Perfect Space,” a track that begins as a beautiful piano ballad until it careens into a clunky rock finish with an awkward announcement: “OK, part two, now clear the house!” At least they’ve saved room for irony: On “Tin Man,” a Brother asserts over melancholy tuba and after an album of plaintive ballads, “I see pain but don’t feel it.”
With their back-porch banjo pop that resists twanginess with earnest sentiment, The Avett Brothers have both evolved their sound and stayed true to it with an album weaved from simple melodies that don't come from the machinations of Pro Tools. I and Love and You is a sonic warm blanket; smart, tender and deliberate. We and like and it.
